


And I'll use you as a warning sign

by follyofyouth



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 20:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5884459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/follyofyouth/pseuds/follyofyouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The bombs are a blessing, the final permission he needs to shuffle off this mortal coil on which he’s overstayed his welcome. He’s not religious, but even if he were, he’s pretty sure that choosing the quick, painless death over the slow, agonizing, inevitable one should be grounds for exemption from any punishment.</p><p> </p><p>Nick, after Jenny and after the bombs, reflects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I'll use you as a warning sign

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there, friends. Nick expresses some pretty upsetting thoughts about suicide as release here. He’s in a pretty extreme situation (radiation poisoning isn’t a nice way to die), and I trust you all know that. But I still need to be a responsible writer and point that out there is almost always another solution and that there are always people willing to help you, even when you think you’re all alone.
> 
> Title lifted from 'I found' by Amber Run.

The bombs are a blessing, the final permission he needs to shuffle off this mortal coil on which he’s overstayed his welcome. He’s not religious, but even if he were, he’s pretty sure that choosing the quick, painless death over the slow, agonizing, inevitable one should be grounds for exemption from any punishment.

 

Besides, he’s not really sure he cares.

 

He has words, _words_ for the powers that be, words about bombs burning up the world, and words about the way he jitters, the way he itches for the drugs they hooked him on, the way he’s crawling the fucking walls with no hope of release. He has words about his work, about the criminal so-called justice system, about Jenny, dead in a pool of her own blood.

 

He has words, _words_ , all the words he didn’t have at the wake, at the funeral. After the second day, on the second morning waking up without her there, without her head on his chest, he realized that he had finally cried himself out; he was left to sit there, at the service, silent and stoic, staring a thousand feet ahead.

 

He hates himself for it. Then, of all times, he should have had the words. He _loved_ her. He _still_ loves her. He owed her a eulogy, something beautiful, something true, something more than the locket —engraved with a heart with a picture of them inside, a gift on their third anniversary— pressed into her hand, its chain wrapped around her wrist in the casket. He owed her Eddie Winter in the electric chair. He owed her the blood of the bastard who pulled the trigger.

 

He couldn’t make good on any of it.

 

He’d tried. _God_ , had he tried. The photo of her body in the August sunlight, crumpled facedown in the street, hair falling out of its pins, and a gaping hole in her chest is still mounted dead center on the wall across from his desk. It’s surrounded by the coroner’s reports, photos of the murder weapon, partial fingerprints tied to potential matches, tied to some small time crook he was almost certain was the gunman.

 

He hadn’t slept; he’d barely eaten. It took work, weeks and weeks of work, but he’d finally found someone willing to meet, to talk, to give him proof. He’d been days away from closing in on Eddie Winter, days away from pulling him off the streets. It wouldn’t have brought Jenny back, but at least he could have looked at her photo, the one on his desk where she smiled in the sunlight on the shores of Lake Michigan, and told her he’d done it, that Winter was gone and she could rest easy.

 

Years ago, the first Halloween after they’d started dating, he’d asked her why she’d drawn salt across the door.

 

“My gran,” she started. “Half-Irish, half-Welsh. Grew up in Wales. She practically raised me.” Jenny had paused, hauling herself to her feet. “And she did it on a steady diet of old folktales, myths.”

 

She’d leaned back against the doorway. “She used to tell me about restless spirits, those who’d been killed before their time. Usually, it’d be a violent death. You had to be wary of them; you never knew if they were sluagh.”  
  
“Sluagh?” He’d asked

 

“The worst of the restless spirits, the really viciously nasty ones. They make a habit of stealing the souls of the living and the almost dead, carrying them off into their ranks.” She rubbed at her temples. “She said cities were the kinds of places that drew too many restless dead, that the sluagh walked among us. So, she salted the doorway. See, salt will slow them down. Iron or silver will stop them outright.”

 

“What about the plain old restless spirits?” He’d asked. “The non-soul-stealing variety.”

 

She’d shrugged at him. “Unfinished business keeps them here, I guess. They’d move on if there wasn’t something tying them down.”

 

He knows he’s tied her here. He’s sure of it. Violent deaths. Deaths before their time. Deaths with unfinished business. Jenny dead on the street from a bullet through the chest. It’s all tied up together. He’d thought that, with Winter gone, she’d have a chance to be at peace, that she’d be able to rest, that she wouldn’t be some wandering spirit.

 

 _Don’t do this to yourself, J_. He used to think. _Leave the wandering to me. I can take this one. This shouldn’t be your burden._ _I led us here. Let me take this._

 

Yes, he was days from putting Winter away, from giving Jenny her peace, from being able to look at her photo and feel something other than the all-consuming guilt.

 

And then Widmark told him game over, tear down the wall, leave Winter be. Told him there was a deal, that the bastard was getting off without a hitch. Told him that he was sorry about Jenny, but hey, they all had a role to play and this was his.

 

Nick doesn’t remember punching him, only the way his hand throbbed in the back of the squad car on the way to CIT.

 

He’s used to flashbulb memory, though; he doesn’t remember anything after his first glimpse of Jenny in the morgue. He doesn’t remember CIT, just the rattle of the pills in the Mentats tin. He doesn’t remember the distant roar from the bomb, just the way the pictures on the mantelpiece fall to the ground, glass shattering everywhere.

 

He lights his last cigarette in the ruins of the house that was supposed to be theirs. The few signals he can still pick up on the radio tell the same story on every station: death and ruin, the end of the world, a long slow slog through radiation sickness for the so-called survivors.

  
He’s not going to stick around for it. He feels like he’s done his time —he’s gone on six weeks to the day without her— but he knows there’s no way to fix how he’s failed her.

 

Still, as he steps out onto the ruined street, he hopes for grace, or at least the chance to wander with her, not after. There’s a breeze off the water and he hopes maybe, just maybe, it’s her, guiding him home.

 

 


End file.
